


first winter

by SSGold19



Series: The Old Owl [2]
Category: Vocaloid
Genre: A lot - Freeform, Angst, F/F, Grief, She misses her gf, Zunko is Not Okay, also café Zunko anyone?, loosely tied to the series, obviously, quite a bit too, so it's a part of it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-16
Updated: 2019-12-16
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:07:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21819424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SSGold19/pseuds/SSGold19
Summary: "You said you'd stay to see the roses in our garden bloom... So why didn't you? Why lie?"
Relationships: Macne Nana/Tohoku Zunko
Series: The Old Owl [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1571608
Comments: 5
Kudos: 5





	first winter

**Author's Note:**

> heyyyyy so it's me again with a fic that takes place in the same universe as "it's the dream afraid of waking" but is like not connected at all so it can be read separately ·v·
> 
> This ship took me and suplexed me into the fucking deep end like you wouldn't imagine. Might point out it was written circa 2017 so yeah.......... have fun :)

The tree stood in the middle of the hill. It had no leaves left, and the brown branches gave the impression of a completely dry plant. If she didn’t know better, she’d say it was dead.

She closed the light green curtains, her long, dark green hair flowing with the wind.

She couldn’t stand seeing anything else anymore. Running her hands through her hair, she glanced bahind her, where a mahogany side table was placed. Big mistake. She saw the damn letter on top of it, torn to shreds just like its envelope. She didn’t want to remember, but she felt forced to. All those moments, those fucking moments, came crashing down on her. And she couldn’t take it anymore. She stared past the papers, at the slightly dented wooden door that looked at her as if laughing at her weakness. The kitchen was that way…

_Maybe a coffee will clear my mind, won’t it?_

She dragged her heavy-feeling body to the door, leaving behind the messy bedroom. Leaving behind the damaged table, the slightly torn curtains, the undone green-based bed, the shreds of the letter… Leaving behind the shreds of her own past, which she avoided like the plague, not wanting to face the music.

She opened a cupboard and took out a white mug, decorated with some handmade floral pattern along the lower edge. She wasn’t thinking as she poured in the day-old drink, barely registering anything as her mind wandered off to some faraway place. To some faraway time. Some faraway voice.

The excessive bitterness of the beverage she drunk daily brought her back to reality and made her want to puke. Coffee had never tasted so bad, burning her stinging throat and threatening to squeeze out more tears.

_But you know it isn’t the coffee._

She didn’t want to cry. Not after she had cried the previous night, sleep lacking as the waterworks flowed freely, or every single day the week before that. She could only rip the paper apart to avoid suffering the pain she had endured the first time. Reading it only once was enough to make her life crumble down and fall apart, so she didn’t need a reprise plus a reminder of past events.

She rubbed her eyes, wiping away every tear that dared to appear. The soft caressing soon became a rude, harsh movement as it was proved futile.

_Why did you have to leave? Why didn’t you stay with me until at least spring, given how hard I begged you? Why didn’t you stay until the roses on our yard offered us their full blooms?_

Winter had once been her favorite season. It was the season where she would give her warmth, where the cuddles were not exactly missing, where her green eyes would look for her hazel ones, where she would whisper “I love you”, to which she answered leaning down and closing the gap between them in a chocolate-flavored kiss.

She sat down at the white kitchen table, resting her elbows on the wooden surface, sipping a bit more of coffee and holding it in her mouth for some seconds, reminiscing its flavor.

“You were right”, she muttered to the air, or to a presence that was no longer, wiggling the mug from side to side, “bitter coffee tastes awful.”

She didn’t lie. Maybe it was _her_ company, or maybe it was the time of the year, but with _her_ coffee tasted infinitely sweeter. Her smile sweetened her days. But now _she_ wasn’t there, and everything had gone with her.

She rubbed with her thumb the remnants of the last tear she had shed before standing up brusquely and throwing the mug’s contents to the sink.

“I can’t stand this anymore”, she said harshly. “I don’t have to embitter my whole life for your goddamn fault.”

But then she saw her. Again. After so much time.

She thought she had gotten rid of all of their couple photos, because they were hurt her like nothing else did, but obviously this one had escaped her insanety-induced cleanup. It was in the open cupboard, on the side, boring holes into her fragile heart. A message was written on the frame, light green, the exact shade of her hair.

_“Just so you think of me every time you’re making coffee._

_P.S.: It's, like, way better with sugar ; )”_

And that was the final straw.

She broke. Her soul sunk, her mind exploded with remembrances of the two of them and fighting to make the tears stay in seemed completely in vain.

Next thing she knew, she was on her knees, hands on the floor, eyes probably somewhere near them.

There she was. A loser. A weak person whose line of sight consisted of her own tears crashing against the cold floor.

“I-If you ju-”, she sobbed, her voice being continuously interrupted by the tear puddles on her eyes, falling with no control, making speech harder than it already was. “I-If you j-just h-had told me…!”

_None of this would have happened, and I wouldn’t have this guilt eating my insides._

She hated it. She hated it with a passion. But the love she felt for _her_ was bigger than any hate she could ever muster, so it ended up taking away all the rage bottled up inside her.

“You’re such an idiot.”

_No. More like **I** am an idiot._

_**I** should have never left for that business trip, so why did I follow your advice and went? You told me you would be totally fine, and I believed you, oh, silly me! But you reassured it to me. Why didn’t I think **you** could be lying?_

_Because, my god, were you._

She was such a stupid one, always making herself the hero and putting on that perfection and unharmed mask nobody could see through. Nobody but her, the dark haired girl that captured her heart. And she should have done something.

It didn’t make any sense to keep thinking about it, but still she did.

Zunko went to some convention she had already forgotten the name of where the main focus were young entrepeneurs and famous business people that had once started like them, and she had encouraged the café owner to go and talk about her experience. But that didn’t look as important as reviving their last moments together. Of course not - it was absolutely irrelevant when compared.

She wanted to give her sweetheart a surprise, so she didn’t answer any of her calls, mostly because she wanted to go to the school with no previous communication to see her face.

She was wrong.

She found it weird, because her _sweetheart_ didn’t call so many times in a row, or just so many times, so when she felt her pocket vibrate and the short tune she had assigned her sound she picked it up:

_“Ms. Tohoku, we are so sorry for your loss”_

She was even more sorry, wasn't she?

_Please forgive me for having abandoned you. Please forgive me for not seeing past your smile. Please forgive me for blaming you for something you couldn’t change. Please forgive me for calling you an idiot._

_Did you still love me even after all the errors I made? The answer is obviously **yes** , because you wouldn’t have made me not worry otherwise. But the actual question is, do I still have the right to love you?_

_When I read the letter you left me, I was eaten by the void and I missed you. I still miss you._

She stared at the ceiling. She spoke softly, directed at someone who neither was there anymore nor would ever be again.

“Nana, I’ll be able to see you tomorrow and I wish it wouldn’t be in a casket. It won’t be enough for me. Seeing you alive, flashing that stupid smile of yours would be more than enough. The winter hasn’t ended yet and that means that so hasn’t this hell I’m trapped in.”

Sobs wrecked her body once more as she idly noticed the phone light up with a notification from one of the people he'd met while her beloved was withering away. She let out a wail, not able to hold it back anymore, and kept on talking.

“It’s my first winter without you. But what hurts more is knowing it will be the first of many.”

Zunko didn't hear the door open.


End file.
